30 Layers, 30 Days. Day 3: Cravings

DEVELOPMENT: 

To keep it real I was thinking about two different topics when I wrote this: food and the women in damaging relationships/friendships. I'm not getting any younger. I was telling one of my sorority sisters a few months ago how annoyed I was with the part of aging that requires me to watch what I eat and slid into the gym to workout. I HATE working out and even though the word on the street is that "thick thighs save lives" I can't apply that theory to my life. I will never have skinny thighs; even when I was super skinny my thighs were still thick so shout out to the forever thick thigh women in the world. But I can't think that they will tone themselves, right? Ugh! So annoying LOL! 

So many of us hold on to people not because they make us feel good or happy but because they make us feel comfortable, just like food. We make emotional decisions to stay with men because we've been with them "forever" or to keep entertaining messy and destructive women because we don't want to be confrontational or go place by ourselves. We must learn to say NO to all of the above. The snack cakes, messy women and the men who don't honor us the way we should be honored: NO and goodbye because your health depends on it. 

All my Love, 

30 Layers, 30 Days. Day 2: Worth The Wait

DEVELOPMENT: 

As we get older our ability to wait for God's best for us becomes a much harder task than it should be. We want to rush into love, rush to move, rush to a new job that we think will make us happy or fill whatever void we have or cover up our insecurities we haven't addressed but that is such a dangerous perspective. There's no quick route to healing, growth, love, maturity; You have to walk through each season, give yourself grace because no matter how beautiful the aisle you desire to walk down, running down it doesn't always get you to the destination your heart desires. Be patient and stay faithful. He knows where you are... rest. 

All my love, 

30 Layers 30 Days: Writing Challenge

Hey guys! 

If you haven't noticed I've been having an issue with writing. I don't know, I hit this weird wall that wasn't writers block but more of a writers-overthinking-paralysis. I've felt really paralyzed by not knowing what to write, how to write it, in addition to working on a book that feels like it will never be released because #writingparalysis. It's been frustrating year with pen and pad, keyboard keys and laptop for me. 

I would start journaling and then stop. Start back and then try to suppress my desire to open the notebook to write something because... I'm sure this is probably considered writers depression. After a trip to California (I've been traveling a lot this year you guys! God is amazing) for work with my hubby I came back with so much spunk. It was such a powerful experience just being around other entrepreneurs who are young grinders and that was just what I needed to shake this funk. 

I didn't have a clear segue into blogging again. Just pop back up in your inbox without any transparency of what's been going on isn't my style. When you write for so long and everything is so organic and then technology and content creating happens, making the organic become strategic, it was difficult for me to flow with the change of blogging and how people are reached by encouragement and empowering stories. This quite possibly makes me slightly elderly in my thought process but I'm working through opening my mind and gift. Working on finding a balance between bringing an updated version of my initial vision for this blog and the one I never imagined it to be. 

To help me shed some of the writers stink I've been rolling around in, I decided to do a writing challenge and what better challenge to do than the 30 Layers 30 Days challenge. It's a challenge with prompts to encourage writers to just write what they feel from the title of the prompt. There aren't any boxes; It's a free verse, free expression, be you type of challenge. 

I thought this would also help me get a system to post on here more than I have in the last... 

6 months 

*shame*

There's a prompt per day and while most of my engagement is on Instagram, I will expound more on what I wrote from the prompt on here. 

DAY 1: EYES WIDE OPEN

DEVELOPMENT: 

There are times where we as women allow our past experiences and brokenness to lead, as we follow behind. Because our emotions can dictate much of how we respond to people, places and things I took the approach of the eyes of the heart being wide open because often times that's how we "see" a new potential partner. But what is really important is seeing ourselves not as women bound by the definition of what we walked through or walked away from or what the crowd might be whispering about us. Instead, we must learn to see ourselves through the eyes of our hearts for our strength, our faith, our resilience before we can ever see through our natural eyes into what or how someone else can love or see us for who we really are. 

Make sure that you are following me on Instagram so that we can chat each day about what's pouring out of me through these prompts. 

Thank you all for hanging with me as I grow as a woman, wife and mother and writer. 

I love you forever! 

When God Blocks It...

Today as I was driving back home from visiting my family it began to rain. It was just me and the boys and they had finally settled down from fighting sleep and I entered into a place of worship and dialogue with God. He began to take me back to the moment when I wanted to mend the broken pieces of my life and fill the voids with a relationship with my father that I came so close to meeting him but God blocked it.

The Mother: Fear-The Thief of Life's Best Moments

Somewhere along the way of this motherhood journey I became bound by fear. Not the type of fear that is centered around the specifics of the children but instead the specifics of me: my words, my actions, my disconnect, my uncertainty, my expression of love, how I interact, my wisdom, my mortality. I became so engulfed with being afraid of life vanishing from my body, that I began to feel like I wasn't living life.

I've always had more fear than faith; a very scary kid and sometimes a scary adult. The details of my story made my glass seem half empty and I carried that with me into motherhood. Trying to pull optimism from places of unfamiliarity, fear began to rob me of moments the minute I found out I was pregnant.